Healthy sales numbers depend on marketing. Although sales teams often receive the highest honors in an organization, they can only do their job when the marketers have done their job. In fact, without a consistent and effective strategy to align brands with current and future customers and prospects, sales efforts can easily fail.
With that in mind, you may want to resist the temptation to focus your marketing efforts on millennials for being the center of attention in the workforce.
After all, despite the increasing influence of the millennial population, this market segment is lagging behind baby boomers in terms of discretionary income and purchasing power.
Even though the Census Bureau reports the fact that the baby boom generation consists only of one fifth population, USA Today recently reported that the group accounts for nearly 42 percent of all consumer spending in the first quarter of 2017.
With this in mind, you may realize that focusing on millennials can result in not having any money on the table. Also, given the current business trend of spending less money on baby boomer marketing, you have the opportunity to achieve a competitive advantage simply by reaching out to that group.
While reaching the mature market segment makes sense, such an emphasis can exclude older sections of the population who have money to spend along with the time they need to enjoy what they buy.
Keeping these points in mind, you should realize that it makes sense to align your brand with the older generation. Here you will learn tips that will help you market your brand to baby boomers and increase your company’s sales.
Old School Strategy
Baby boomers remember how things were before everything changed. With this in mind, you should include tactics you may find outdated when reaching this audience.
For example, the first generation grew up with television, so many boomers are still comfortable responding to commercials on television. Likewise, you might also include radio advertising in your marketing mix.
Unlike millennials who use witty 140-character tweets, emoji, and acronyms, baby boomers often favor strong, text-based messages. In addition, this segment of your audience tends to be more patient than millennials who often expect instant gratification.
For the most part, baby boomers are not impulsive. For this reason, you can expect them to carefully evaluate each purchase. However, when they finally do choose to buy your product, you can expect them to be a higher rate of repeat customers than the younger generation.
Even though market research shows it does Television ads To get the best results from baby boomers, you can also expect to achieve good results from other older marketing channels such as direct mail.
While you reinject your old school tactics into your marketing strategy, remember to include a traditional online site. For example, many baby boomers rely on search engines like Google to inform and guide them when shopping. Additionally, this generation turns to internet searches when they want to contact a company
New School Technology
Baby boomers have lived through decades of innovation, so never discount their ability to adapt and embrace modern technology and trends. After all, they grew up with television and have experienced it all digital revolution started with the advent of the personal computer.
With this in mind, you should also remember that many baby boomers remain in the workforce and therefore have hands-on experience with social media, mobile, commerce, and the cloud.
Still, you might think the baby boomers might be using technology in a different way. For example, even though people of this generation use the Internet, you may need to spend some time determining where you can reach them online.
To demonstrate a generational divide, imagine baby boomers hanging out on Instagram and Snapchat where millennials post photos of their clothes and walks.
Generally, baby boomers love to share news about their travels and videos of their DIY projects and hobbies, so you should design your messages and content to reach them on Facebook and YouTube.
In short, baby boomers make up a large portion of the population. However, as people of that generation, some companies made the mistake of underestimating their purchasing power.
For this reason, targeting older customers can give you a competitive advantage in the marketplace while providing value to people who are approaching retirement age or have retired. As already noted, you can meet the challenges of marketing for baby boomers with a healthy mix of “old school” tactics and “new school” technology.
